Water can be sprayed on the wheel, and brake force, temperature and time to stop are measured. Reynolds brake test involves 16 minutes of continuous braking, ramping up to 1,200 watts

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

For 2014, Reynolds has revamped its Attack, Assault and Strike wheels with wider rims and snub-nosed spoke beds. For years, Reynolds has held the line with thin rims that came down to a fine edge; the company still proclaims this design to be aerodynamically superior and uses it on top-end models

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

The all-carbon RZR is built entirely in Utah, with carbon rims, hubs, spokes and even nipples

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

These are carbon RZR nipples

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

The nipples are held temporarily in place with a film that burns off at 200 degrees Fahrenheit

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

After the spokes and carbon nipples are set in the wheel - which has no tension - the wheel is trued with concentric dials and heat

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Finally, the wheel is trued using bolts that thread through the outer hub up against the inner, adjusting it like a Christmas tree in a stand. Then adhesive is poured into the hole and the two hubs and solidified

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Reynolds makes its own rims, but buys spokes and hubs

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

This was a pizza oven. Then it became a composite oven for Paul Lew, who used it to build early carbon Rolf rims for the US Postal Service Team for the Tour de France

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Reynolds' history with carbon goes back to the old Ouzo Pro fork

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Today, Reynolds designs all its wheels with CFD (computation fluid dynamics), then validates them in the wind tunnel

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

The first Reynolds carbon wheel

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Reynolds' head of engineering Kim Kington explains that the company spent about half a million dollars on mold-making machinery

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

This is part of a mold, made through two-step CNC machining

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Swatches of carbon are cut by computer design before layup

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Although most of Reynolds' wheels are made at their factory in China, all the tooling to make the wheels is made in Utah

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Stacks of carbon are compressed on this vacuum table before layup

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

We weren't allowed to see the layup process, but once the carbon is laid on the mold the whole operation is bolted together in this shell

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Weighing about 65lb, the clamped mold is inserted into an oven for curing

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

Reynolds has two ovens in Utah, both of which are identical to the 20 in China

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

A mountain bike rim emerges from the oven

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

The rim comes out with a seemingly solid core where the tire bed will go

(Ben Delaney/Immediate Publishing)

A look at the hyperlight and all-carbon RZR before the bearings are pressed into the molded carbon race

Carbon fiber can make for a bumpy ride, but after a few challenging years Reynolds has refocused its business and is hoping for fast and smooth roads (and trails) ahead. BikeRadar visited the brand-new Reynolds headquarters in Sandy, Utah, where the company tests and designs wheels and makes the tools for its wholly-owned Chinese factory, where most of the hoops are made.

As of March, Reynolds has been in a 25,000sq-ft facility just south of Salt Lake City, having moved from its nearby previous home of 15 years. While newer is often nicer, the move is also symbolic, as Reynolds has left behind many other components of the business – forks, tubing, windsurfing, auto racing parts – to focus strictly on high-end bicycle wheels.

Reynolds' parent company, MacLean-Fogg, has purchased a number of carbon brands over the past two decades – Quality Composites (tubing), Reynolds (forks), Lew Composites (wheels) – but began to struggle with its assortment of products.

Reynolds was known in the US years ago for steel tubing. The relationship with Reynolds UK began as a licensing deal to use the brand name for carbon tubing. To sort it all out, MacLean brought in Mike Dufner and Dean Gestal as CFO and CEO respectively.

"Dean and I realized that the wheel business had great patent protection, good designs and good margins," Dufner said. "We realized forks were becoming a commodity. Easton came in and began selling them for what we could make them for."

So Reynolds stopped that, and sold off the tubing and windsurfing elements to focus on bike rims.

Designed in Utah, built in China

Today, Reynolds has six engineers in Sandy, including wheel guru Paul Lew and new head of engineering Kim Kington, who came from the aerospace industry. "It's a bit of a change," Kington said, "but in both fields everyone wants to go faster and lighter. It's all about aerodynamics."

All the new rims are designed using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and then tested in wind tunnels. "Tunnels are good for validation of designs, but they are not an effective way to actually design," said Lew, who has been making carbon rims for more than 20 years. "I think you'll see wind tunnels start to become more popular for rider position and gear selection, but not so much for designing product."

Reynolds recently invested nearly half a million dollars (approximately £318,000) in machines to make the molds used to build carbon rims. It takes about two days to machine a mold, Kington said. The clam-shell molds are all made in Utah, then shipped to China, where Reynolds owns its own factory in Guangzhou.

One of Reynolds' mold-making machines

"Opening our own factory was a terrible way to start," Dufner said of the early days in China. "It took lots of years and mistakes to figure it out, but the end result is total control of the end product. We have our people, our process and our products."

Reynolds buys hubs and spokes from DT Swiss and other vendors. To build a rim, it cuts out pieces of carbon fiber impregnated with its own resin, then packs those together with a vacuum table. Those pieces are then hand-laid into clam-shell molds, which are clamped together over a bladder and placed in an oven.

Reynolds has two functional ovens in Sandy that are identical to the 20 used in China. The company also still has the original altered pizza oven that Lew used to make rims in the early 1990s, included those branded 'Rolf' and ridden by the US Postal Service Team at the Tour de France.

Testing, testing

Reynolds does a few types of rim and wheel testing in Sandy as well, including impact (50lb dropped from 350mm on a bare rim three times), braking and pressure.

The Big Bertha machine can apply calibrated brake loads to a spinning wheel under a 60kg (27lb) load. The Reynolds brake test is a 16-minute continuous process during which braking ramps up to a maximum of 1,200 watts. The machine can measure braking force, temperature and time to stop under a given pressure at a given speed.

Heat failures from braking friction were an early Achilles' heel for carbon clinchers, when the resin would heat up and the rim would bend or burst, but Lew contends that that's all in the past now: "In 2004, 2005 and 2006, we were guilty of heat failure, but certainly since 2010 those problems were gone."

Reynolds also tests rims for pressure – during the tour, a carbon clincher rim blew out at 350psi.

This week, Reynolds will be releasing information on its 2014 lineup, which includes some wider rims with snub-nosed spoke beds, a big divergence from the brand's signature pointed rims. We'll bring you that story in the coming days.